This article is written by Jane Foers who shares her journey from adoptee, to adopter and therapist. She’s a therapeutic coach and counsellor.

From adoptee to adoptive parent and counsellor

My adoption in 1970 had a familiar backdrop – I was the result of a one-night stand and adopted after being in foster care for two months.  My adoptive parents already had an older (adopted) daughter. 

Apparently, I was the perfect baby who never cried. However, our adoptions caused a generational rift as my paternal grandparents said my parents were ‘bringing up someone else’s child’. 

My sister and adoptive mother had a very turbulent relationship which worsened as my sister entered her teenage years.  My sister was the rebel; I was the peacemaker.  I became anxious that my sister would leave home and can clearly remember one day when I was a teenager, my mother asking me “I hope you’re not going to go and look for your birth records are you?”

My answer was ‘Of course not’ as like lots of adoptees, I didn’t want to upset her.  I didn’t give a thought to my own curiosities around my adoption.

Fast forward to my older teenage years and work. I befriended people easily and spread myself thinly.  I never ruffled feathers and didn’t speak my mind.  It had been instilled into me that sex outside marriage was wrong.  My sister explained the irony of this to me – that we were both the product of sex outside marriage, yet our mother was incredibly moralistic about this. 

I didn’t attend university and flitted from job to job, always feeling unsettled after a while.  I married in my late 20s and we decided to start a family but after tests, required infertility treatment.  Around that time I started to experience back problems and just short of starting the first course of IVF, my back problem worsened. 

I was advised to stop the IVF.

Navigating infertility

Over time, I underwent two surgeries and became both anxious about using my back and low in mood as I had to rely on others for help.   I resembled a piece of cardboard mentally and physically.  I was referred to counselling and started to become interested in the mind/body connection.   Eventually, I decided to complete the first counselling skills courses and then obtained a job in mental health. 

A decade later, I started thinking about starting a family again and the option that we could adopt. I wasn’t sure why this hadn’t been something I had considered before. Looking back I think we were swept along by the diagnosis of infertility and straight into IVF.   I now felt that adoption was some kind of ‘destiny’ and for the first time, I weirdly felt I was doing something within my control.   

Adopting as an adoptee

At our first introductory meeting with Social Services, we were told how children waiting for adoption had experienced loss and separation alongside possible abuse, trauma and/or neglect – a very different landscape to my own adoption.

Quite rightly, our application was a long and rigorous process. I was asked to explore my own adoption and for the first time felt I could be honest with someone who didn’t know my family. It was like therapy.  Then my father died and we were advised to take a break.  Eventually, we were approved and matched with a 10-month-old boy.

After the introductory week with the foster carers, we brought him home and from that day on it was like he had always been with us.  Initially, I felt like a fish out of water at the local playgroup. I befriended the grandparents to avoid talk of breastfeeding and new baby stories.  I loved the special adoption playgroups as I found I could relax and connect easily with the other adoptive parents.

My son has a life storybook and quite a lot of information about his birth family alongside indirect contact with his birth mother.  We also meet up with one of his birth siblings and he has a good age-appropriate understanding of his story. 

It will be for him to decide if he wants to make contact with his birth family.  I have and always will discuss his adoption openly with him and do not ever want him to be worried about our feelings should he wish to contact his birth family or talk about them.

Training to be a counsellor

I decided to continue with my counselling training and between lockdowns, we learnt about the many therapeutic models, a lot of which had a focus on childhood.  I began to join the dots about myself.

l started to feel differently towards my adoptive mother like she didn’t have the same level of control over me anymore.  I began gentle somatic work and felt it helped to release deep-rooted feelings (I had always been someone who never cried or expressed emotion easily). 

A huge shift for me was realising that ‘The Body (does indeed) Keep the Score’. I developed a better understanding of my adoptive mother’s upbringing which had been difficult.  She had lost her first child to a hereditary disorder and my understanding is that she was encouraged to ‘get on’ with her life and (as in those days) not offered any emotional support.

After completing my counselling training I worked for a couple of local charities in mental health and the LBTQ sector and more recently, have trained to become an alcohol-free coach for ‘grey area drinkers’.

Raft Coaching

I’ve worked with clients who have had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol and who have disclosed something about adoption in their lives.  They described how they used alcohol to help fill a void,  drinking to cover feelings of loss, loneliness, shame, and abandonment. I believe adoption and alcohol are often very intertwined.

I’ve also completed training to become an adoption support counsellor and offer counselling and coaching to adoptees (over 18), adoptive parents, and birth parents. 

Adoption is complex and multi-faceted. It is something that can lay dormant and then appear at different points in a person’s life and I believe there is no one right time for counselling.  At times, I have felt like banging my head against a brick wall when adoptees (including my son) are described as ‘lucky’ …

I work as an integrative counsellor and bring different approaches to my work. Each client has their own unique and different experiences, thoughts, and beliefs about adoption. However, I believe the most important thing for any therapeutic relationship is that the therapist ‘gets it’. That they have an understanding of the client’s inner world and can help them explore not only themselves but also issues that may be difficult to discuss with family and friends because of the very nature of adoption.

You can find out about my services on my website, on the Counselling Directory website under “Find a therapist”, or drop me an email at remoteadoptionfocusedtherapy@gmail.com or remoteaftherapy@gmail.com.

Head to the home page to read all of the latest articles.

I’m Still Standing

Individual identity is important; we can all agree on that. But when I hear someone say, “Just be you”, I can’t help but squirm. For one, yourself is rarely what is best in most situations. Two, I also wonder, if simply being yourself creates the illusion that you have no power to shape or to mould out the (prolonged pause) bad bits?

Being a teenager and learning that such ‘self-crafting’ is possible could be an extremely powerful thing. However, there is a downside to this, because part of yourself is your past. And your past. Well, you can’t change that.

For some, the past they carry is heavier than for others. For anyone who is adopted, this burden can be quite large. This can take hold and then shape their identity more than they seem to be able to themselves. More than they want.

In my family, my adoption was talked about in a way that meant I created a toolset of motivation. What happened in my past with my birth parents wasn’t fun, good, or beneficial to me. But without sounding like a hippy, I firmly believe that life is riddled with rough times. And, after adoption, with the right support and mindset, we can all go on to take on the world headfirst.

This is the basis I have built my foundation on as a person. And this is a way for you, too, to take control of your past, no matter what it is.

I’m thankful I have the resources to do so, because even though it was tough. I’m still standing.

By Arran Gray

Head to the adoption section to read more interviews and articles written by adoptees.

I think lucky is a word that means so many different things to those who’ve experienced adoption. I feel very lucky to have been chosen to be mum to our daughters. Our family are lucky to have our girls in our lives. But they aren’t lucky to have been adopted. Their start in life was full of loss and trauma.

It’s a term that people often use to describe adopted children, saying they’re lucky to have been adopted. I hope it’s a well-meaning comment, but it shows how far we still have to go in terms of raising awareness around adoption.

Chloe’s perspective on what lucky means for her is humbling.

Lucky

Perhaps some young people don’t understand what it means to be adopted and be “in the system” until they’re older. But I always knew.

Adopted at eight years old, I worked out early on what foster care was. I accepted I’d move around continuously and that eventually, leave the system. I also understood that I was… lucky.

Being in foster care was a fairly confusing and upsetting time for me. It was “decided” that every second Thursday, I would be allowed to meet my birth mother.

At first, I’d be overexcited and sometimes even be physically sick before she arrived. Soon after, it turned to a case of absence. She stopped turning up, and this fact would make me so ill that on the day after the contact, I’d again become very ill.

My foster carer soon became my long-term carer, and from this time, I have a lot of memories. I’m not sure if this is the same for all of you. But for me, I felt that my foster carer and I formed a kind of mother-daughter bond, which, as we all know, includes both good and bad times.

Memories of foster care

Strangely, some of my clearest memories are the weirder ones.  For example, I’m extremely glad to see the back of haggis; my arch nemesis. It was a Halloween night, and I was told that I wasn’t allowed to go out trick or treating unless I ate my haggis, which she knew I hated. Maybe it was a test, but I’ll never know.

However, I’ve also got lots of good memories, which balance the bad. For example, our trips to Edinburgh zoo, Chill Factor in Manchester (sledging/ skiing) and my all-time favourite, horse riding.

Can I trust you with a secret, reader? My biggest memory with horse riding was when my brother’s pony handler let go of his pony momentarily, and the horse spooked, making him fall halfway off his pony. It then started to canter off with him. I know that this seems to be a weird thing to put in a blog, but my point is that memories are weird; you can’t choose what sticks.

Foster care is definitely not convenient or the best thing to go through. But if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to make good memories and look back at that time with fondness.

Head to the adoption section to read more interviews and articles written by adoptees sharing their experiences.

A Study In Adoption

My first problems in school started soon after my adoption.  I eagerly told all my classmates that I was adopted. I think because I didn’t want it to come out as the big surprise.

To me, adoption seemed like a fresh start where people didn’t judge me for my family and the things they’d done.

However, as I had a sibling, this meant that everyone now knew my brother’s story. He wasn’t pleased. He wanted to be the normal kid, living the normal life.

Many adopted young people have to move schools after their adoption. This was also the case for me, and it was tough. In those first few weeks, I followed the customs of my old school. where we had to sit cross-legged and raise our index finger to our lips when we wanted to talk. When I did this at my new school, they thought I was weird and old-fashioned.

Another school issue I faced was the gaps in my learning. Before my adoption, I didn’t go to school all the time, and as a result, my maths was dreadful. Many “normal” people have trouble with maths or English, but I truly struggle. People have told me I probably missed the bits at the start, so my whole foundation to learn maths was actually missing.

To try to fix it, I had to spend my summers catching up on what I missed. To this day, my addition and subtraction are not up to scratch. Finding something as simple as primary school maths difficult was really embarrassing for me, and I feel it’s the reason I have some insecurities. It hurts if I’m called a name like “stupid”.

The social element

Lastly, I feel the social element of school also affected me. Bullying and care-related name-calling left me feeling very insecure about how people see me and how they think of me.

To manage this, I’ve spent some time speaking to Scottish Adoption about how I think about myself and others.

For any adoptive parents out there, a fairly easy way to help your child through this school stuff is to listen and listen well. Sometimes we, as adoptees, feel like we aren’t heard.

I also believe that most adopted children will need more support to get through school. So be ready!

Head to the adoption section to read more interviews and articles written by adoptees, sharing their experiences.

The group work is key to them being able to reflect the way they do. They’re passionate about giving young adoptees the chance to be part of a similar community. The Ambassadors would love to campaign for all adopted young people to have access to group work and to give young adopted people across the world a space to be part of a similar adoptee community.

Over the next few weeks, I’m resharing the blogs because they give such a powerful insight into some important issues young adopters face.

The first blog is written by Chloe.

I see Me

Are you still trying to figure out who you are, or have you already found yourselves?

If the latter, congratulations! However, for those of you who are still finding yourselves, here are some things from my journey I’d like to share with you.

For me growing up, if adoption was spoken about at school, it often came from playground insults. I heard a lot of “LOL, your birth parents didn’t want you” or “Is your life like Tracey Beaker?”

I’m sure those of you who’ve been pointed at and insulted felt the same as I did. It affected my confidence and how I viewed myself.

For a long time, I took these insults.  However, in the past year, I decided – no longer! The last time I was insulted, I replied with the following, “No, my life is nothing like Tracey Beaker and why I was adopted is none of your business”.

Back in my birth town, everyone knew me and my family as a problem family who needed to be taken care of. This also impacted on how I saw myself.

My adoption journey

Throughout my adoption journey, there have also been a variety of feelings that have troubled me. For example, a sense of abandonment, confidence issues and a lack of control. These feelings have come from both my experiences and from how others perceive adoption as a whole.

With both, the result has meant that adoptees think that how we feel inside is how others feel about us.

The good news is, things are getting better. Growing in age, leaving the toxic environment of school and realising that through things like work, I now have confidence that I can control my own future.

Now, when I feel negative about my past, I remind myself that only I have the power to change my identity.

I see Me!

Head to the adoption section to read more interviews and articles written by adopted children and adults, sharing their experiences.

My birth history

My birth history isn’t straightforward. I was born when my birth mum was 16; my father was unknown. She gave birth to my half-sister and had another child three years later who stayed with her. My half-sister and I were neglected and ultimately taken into care but were subsequently separated we both got adopted by different parents when I was four years old.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the last time I was taken into care as it happened again when I was 15. I was picked up from school one day by my adoptive dad who told me he was going to put us in a home for a couple of weeks to give him and my adoptive mum a break. I was supposed to have been a problem child.

I never went back home.

I stayed in the children’s home until I got kicked out when I was 17 as I had a fight with a member of staff. I was then moved into board and lodgings which ended the same way.  I rang social services and went into a children’s home for one night. I then moved to foster parents who helped me turn my life around and got me back on the straight and narrow.

Contacting my birth family

When I turned 18 I started to look for my birth mum. I discovered that she lived a few miles away in the next town. Ultimately, I met and got to know her and the rest of the family including my nan, half-sister, aunts and uncles.

As I got to know her I kept asking who my father was. She didn’t want to share who he was but in the end, gave me his name and told me he had died in a car crash a few years after I was born. His name always stuck in my head.

Unfortunately, she constantly lied and turned out to be a very selfish woman. We lost touch as I didn’t want to stay in contact with her. She passed away a few years ago from cancer at the of 65.

I also looked for my half-sister who was adopted by different parents. We’ve managed to build a relationship and still keep in touch.

My adopted family

From being 15 until I was 25, I didn’t speak to my adopted family and not one of them contacted me during those 10 years until I bumped into one of my adopted aunties and we started talking. She asked me if I wanted to see my adopted mum and dad again and so I did.

We kept in touch for a few years and then I fell out with them again and didn’t talk for another three or four years. Eventually, I got back in contact and we started to build a relationship, but it wasn’t the same as too many years had passed. We continued to keep in touch now and then until my adopted mum passed away in 2024. I was with the family when she died. My adopted dad is still alive he’s 93, but I have no strong connection to him or any of them really.

Finding my paternal family

At the age of 55, my wife brought me an ancestry DNA test to see if I could find any information on the paternal side of my family. I had nothing other than the name of my birth father who I’d been told had died in a car crash and I wanted to see if I could find any relatives on his side of the family.

I started this in February 2024 and struggled when my tests came in as I only had connections to second cousins.

Not wanting to leave it there, I looked to see if there was somewhere else I could go for help to find this side of my birth family. I found a Facebook page called “DNA Detectives UK”, who helped for free. I shared the name of my father but I wasn’t sure if his name was correct or true and if my birth mum told me the truth so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

DNA Detectives

At first, his surname didn’t appear in the searches but one day I got a possible lead and suddenly his name appeared in my tree. It was a huge shock as it revealed he wasn’t dead but very much alive. But I still wasn’t 100% sure nor was my DNA detective. I needed someone in my tree to do a DNA test and subsequently, I found out he had four daughters and another son.

I managed to make contact with one of his daughters via Facebook. Initially, I didn’t mention that her dad could be mine too as I didn’t know her family situation. It took a few months for her to finally agree and do a test. When she did, the results came back and it confirmed that she was my half-sister. Initially, she thought I might be her uncle and then I told her the truth that I thought we shared the same dad.

When he found out he was shocked as he didn’t know about me. But it turned into a positive as he wanted to meet me and so did the rest of my sisters and brother. He has welcomed me with open arms, as have the rest of my family. He’s messaged and phoned me every day since. He feels a lot of guilt that I went through all this in my life and that if he’d known about me, he would’ve taken me in. He had a relationship with my mum but didn’t know she was pregnant.

A bright future

We’ve had a big family reunion which makes a happy result. I have made some great new friends with second cousins along this journey. Not all stories like mine end happily, and I’m so grateful that mine has. I want to take this opportunity to thank Andrew Soper as if I hadn’t found his service on Facebook, I probably wouldn’t have the answers I have.

If you’d like support to help you find your birth family, Adoption UK has a range of resources available both online and in person.

Head to the adoption section to read more experiences from adoptees. adopters and birth parents.

Something to bear in mind with this is that a lot of adoptees speaking out online, are doing so because their experiences haven’t been good. Adoption, for them, is the cause of more trauma, rather than helping them move on from the experiences in their early childhood.

I quite often fall down a rabbit hole when I read posts from adoptees. They make me think our girls are almost destined to feel that adoption was wrong which will take over their lives.

But everyone is different. Everyone’s experiences are different. Some adoptees will have fractured relationships with their adoptive parents. Some will have wonderful, strong, healthy relationships.

Learning about their birth family is crucial for some adoptees. For others, it’s not. Some will be curious and ask lots of questions. For others, they might not feel the need to find out more until they’re well into adulthood.

This is a subject I’ve explored during my conversations with Simon Benn. Everyone is different and deals with things differently. Every adoptee is different. Every birth child is different. One of the things that’s stuck with me from my conversations with Simon is that adoption is a fixed event that happens to children, but it doesn’t define who they are.

Learning about birth history

Our girls are growing up knowing they’re adopted. I was curious to know if this was the case for Simon as he was adopted as a young baby. Conversations about adoption didn’t feature heavily in his childhood. It was something he knew about but describes it as being a bit of a non-issue for him as he grew up.

“There was no significant pain about it. There was no significant conversation about it or curiosity on my part about my birth family. My parents read me a kids storybook which was about adoption and they said that this is how you came to live with us. It was something along those lines.

As I was growing up, I felt that was the past. That’s what happened (to an extent) and it wasn’t talked about. There was no curiosity about my birth family at that time.”

Simon went through his childhood and early adult life not thinking too much about adoption. At that time, he accepted it as the way he came into his family, and didn’t attach much significance to it. It wasn’t until he was 40 that things changed for him when he found out a childhood toy had been given to him by his birth mother.

“When I found out the teddy bear was from my birth mother, my first reaction was of gentle curiosity. It was along the lines of ‘I wonder why they didn’t tell me that before’. Then a couple of months later there was this violent outburst about it. It came at a time when I was struggling with business things and at a low ebb and it became a bigger issue.

When I talked to my mum about it recently, she said they’d told me the teddy bear was from my birth mum. So I don’t know if I’d forgotten that or if her memory about it is wrong. If it hadn’t been for the teddy bear then I don’t know what my life would’ve been like. I’m glad that it happened like that. It’s another marker on the self-discovery map for me.”

Adoption trauma

But he explains that the pain he experienced about adoption was relatively brief and not connected or the cause of pain in other areas of his life. That’s a view that’s often challenged within the adoption community.

“Adoption has caused me two five-second bursts of incredible pain. Business has caused me years of pain. But if I’m in the adoption world they say that the whole thing is related. And I have to say no. No, that’s not my experience of it and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and exploring it.

Everyone’s different. My adoption is a fixed event. It happened 54 years ago. My mood has been up and down during that time and is variable. A fixed past event like adoption, cannot determine a variable experience in the present. The meaning a lot of people give adoption is that ‘I’m adopted, I’m traumatised and I will be forever traumatised because of it.’ Like the primal wound. But that’s not my experience.

Trauma isn’t a once-and-forever thing. It doesn’t make you broken. There are moments of peace and it’s the level of peace within a child. But my view seems to be very different to most people about this.”

Adoption Podcast

Simon’s podcast “Thriving Adoptees” is about spreading positivity and helping adoptees thrive. He wants to challenge the feelings of hopelessness that often seems to come from professionals as well as adoptees.

“A lot of people working in adoption seem to have lost the hope. If we think that the hope is lost, then it is. I talk about trauma-informed but hope-obsessed. The primal wound is a theory. I’ve heard professors say there’s no scientific evidence of it. There’s clinical evidence which is different.

What is wounding? Has adoption hurt my feelings? Yes. My feelings were that I wasn’t good enough for my birth mum to love me enough to keep me. So she gave me the consolation prize of a teddy. But that was a 10 second feeling. Adoption has hurt or wounded my feelings. But I’m not my feelings. It’s wounded my sense of self and ego ‘how dare she?’ in the same way ‘how dare the builder not come when he said he would?’ But for me, it is a fluid thing and depends on my mood.

I didn’t feel wounded until I read the book “The Primal Wound”. We don’t need to heal if we don’t think we’re wounded. Adoption has hurt my feelings but it hasn’t wounded me. If we believe we’re wounded then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you focus on the trauma, it gets bigger. And the world gets darker and darker and more scary and we get more traumatised.

I’m not my ego or my feelings. It’s not who I am. Trauma is something we’ve been through. But the trauma isn’t who I am. The adoptee who’s been through hell, doesn’t see the distinction between the two. For some people, they’re very far down into the trauma and can’t see the light. So they think that I’m wrong and that there is no hope.

Hope for the future

I think there is hope. The work I do now is bringing this hope to the world of adoption. Hope that adoptees can thrive. I’m working with adoption organisations going deeper into this.”

I’ve learned a lot from talking to Simon and am very grateful to him for sharing his experience and spreading hope around the adoption community. Trauma-informed and hope-obsessed is what we need to focus on. And by doing this we can help our children dream big and find their own happy.

If you’d like to find out more about Simon and the work he does, visit his website or follow him on LinkedIn or Twitter You can listen to me talking to Simon about helping our kids be happy here.

If you enjoyed reading this article, why not buy me a coffee to show your support for the magazine? If you’d like to read more articles about adoption, health and well-being, and parenting, head over to the home page and have a look at what’s new.

First up is an interview with Jodie who shares her adoption journey; you can follow more of her story on Instagram.

Introduce yourself and your family

I am Jodie, and my husband Darrell and I adopted our son in 2020. We live in the Cotswolds.

Tell us a bit about your adoption journey

We started the adoption process in August 2018. When we had our first meeting with a social worker she felt that I hadn’t grieved my grandmother’s death properly so we were put on hold until January of 2019 which is when we officially started Stage 1.

Stage 1 took a long time as our local authority didn’t have any courses with spaces available until June and July. Stage 2 didn’t start until August and we had our approval panel in November 2019 so the assessment took just less than a year. 

We then went into family finding and initially got linked with a little girl in January 2020 but that link wasn’t right for us or the child. We found our son in March of 2020, however, due to COVID things became very slow as many social workers were working from home and we weren’t officially linked with him until June 2020.

Our matching panel was in September 2020 and at the end of that month, we began introductions! Our son moved in on the 5th of October 2020 and in March 2021 he became legally ours. So in total, from start to finish it took just over two and a half years and we have now been a family for four years.

The process felt very long; we had tried for a biological child for 10 years before we realised that biology doesn’t make a family so the extra two years seemed like forever But it was worth every minute. Parts of it felt quite intrusive but now we’ve done all of the training and we’ve been parenting an adopted child, we understand why they have to be so thorough and get quite deep.

How did matching work?

We had decided we weren’t going to look at the photos or videos of the children during the matching process until we’d read all of their profiles and knew that we could look after them and manage any medical issues. We lived in a flat at the time so, for example, we wouldn’t have been a good match for a child with physical disabilities as there wasn’t a lift or other access to our home.

This worked until we saw a six-month-old little boy with a big grin on his face. I turned to my husband and said “That’s our son”. We read his profile and it was love; we didn’t worry about any unknowns on his profile (he had quite a few at the time)

What was your biggest source of support during your journey through the assessment and matching?

Our family were the best support during the journey. We told our immediate family from the moment we started the process because we wanted to be able to talk to them about it and get them on board. We also had the best social worker who was such a support through the whole process. We also made a Whatsapp group with our fellow adopters on the courses and kept in touch throughout the process.

What were introductions/transitions like? Do you keep in touch with foster carers now?

Introductions were amazing and honestly, his foster carers are the most incredible people, I don’t actually have enough words to describe what wonderful people they are. They made us so welcome when we went to their home. Our son was their first from-birth baby placement as they had previously been foster carers for teenagers. He had been with them from four days old and by the time we met him they had been his carers for nine months.

I had really bad anxiety throughout the introductions and made myself ill, but they were so accommodating, kept me calm and reassured me that I could do this. We spent a lot of time with them at their home and although we did take our son out for days out, we were limited in what we could do due to the pandemic restrictions.

They live fur hours away from us so we stayed in an Air BnB. After nine days down where they live, they came and stayed in a hotel near us. The original plan was that our son would go back to them at the hotel each night for five days before his first sleepover, and then the 6th day would be move-in/placement day. However, our son was not coping with going back to the hotel so his first sleepover was the second night that they were in our area, they just visited a couple of times a day until placement day.

Placement day was such a bittersweet day. It was great for us as we finally had our son home but for them, it was a happy day tinged with the sadness of leaving the baby they raised for nine months. I honestly don’t know how foster carers do their job! We are still in contact with them regularly and see them a couple of times a year. The four-hour drive to see them is the only thing stopping us from seeing them more often.

Have you needed post-adoption support since your child came home? If so, did you get the support you needed? Was it timely or were there waiting lists?

We accessed post-adoption support recently as our son had a hard time with the transition from nursery to the summer holidays before he started school. Initially, I emailed and within a few days, we had a phone call from a social worker who talked through all of the techniques we had been using to help our son. We were told we were doing everything right and that they were there if we needed more help, and haven’t needed any since then but we know where they are if we need them.

What’s been the hardest part of your adoption journey?

For us, it was the waiting and the turning down of the profiles because we felt very guilty saying no to children who needed loving homes. But you have to realise that you can’t help every child. The matching process is about finding the child that you are perfect for and that will fit perfectly into your family.

The best part?

Completing our family. He is the most perfect little boy. And yes, I am biased!

What advice would you give yourself knowing what you do now, if you were just starting your adoption journey?

Make time for yourself. Things will go very fast once you start introductions so look after yourself as you can’t pour from an empty cup. Read up on the signs of post-adoption depression and get help if you get any symptoms.

Head to the adoption section to read more interviews with adopters, adoptees, foster carers and birth parents.

Some children haven’t lived with their birth family. Some have but were too young to remember. For others, their birth family will have been their everything for a lot of years.

The majority of help and support that’s available to adopters and their children is from adults. Adults telling other adults how to share sensitive and sometimes difficult information with children.

I often worry about how my children will feel when they’re older, particularly teenagers, about the steps we’ve taken now to keep in contact with their birth family. Will they think we should’ve done more or done things differently?

Teen Talk Adoption

There’s no way of being able to second-guess that. But what we can do, is learn from those who’ve been through it.  I’ve recently come across an inspiring group of teenagers on Instagram. Teen Talk Adoption is an Instagram-based online teen adoptee community created by the Scottish Adoption Teen Ambassadors.

The Teen Ambassadors have created a safe space for adopted teens to connect with other adopted teens to share their experiences and support one another. One of their aims is to educate others about the issues that affect adopted children as they grow up.

Blog post written by Teen Ambassadors

Some of the ambassadors have written blogs sharing their experiences on different topics. I think all of the blogs are brilliant, but two of them really struck a chord with me. This one about life story work talks about a lot of the concerns I have for our girls when they’re teenagers.

I worry we won’t be able to give them all the answers they’ll want, simply because we don’t have them. Reading the blog brought home the kinds of issues adopted children face as they grow up. It’s one thing to experience those things, but to want to share them so that others can learn from them is really inspiring.

The second blog that resonates with me is this one about coping with isolation. It’s such an honest blog and I hope Tegan feels very proud that she’s written it. Again, it’s given me a lot of insight into issues that my daughters may face as they grow up.

A teenager’s perspective

I started this magazine to share with the wider world what adoption is really like. I wanted to give a voice and platform to those who wanted it so they could share their experiences from different perspectives.

Reading about adoption from a teenager’s perspective is humbling but also enabling. It gives parents of younger children tools to help them support and guide their little ones as they grow up and navigate their feelings about who they are and where they come from.

Head over to the adoptee support section to read more about adoption from an adoptee’s perspective.

One of the best ways for us to support our children as they grow up and learn more about their birth history is to learn from people who’ve experienced adoption and some of the issues our children face.

I’m very grateful to E who shares her experience in this interview and has some tips for adopters and young adoptees.

How old were you when you were adopted?

I was adopted from birth, I had two foster carers before being placed with my adoptive parents at 6 months old. 

What are your main memories of your childhood?

My main memories of my childhood were generally happy memories of feeling loved and cared for. But some memories were of feeling lost, different, and that I didn’t fit in anywhere. I still have some of those feelings to this day

What do you think of adoption?

Adoption, I feel, is necessary. Too many children without a place to call home, and many women who can’t have children but desperately want them. Adoption is also a minefield of emotions from both sides and for adoptees, this is a lifelong thing where we need to be understood and guided through life. 

How do you feel when people know you’re adopted? Is it something you talk openly about?

I don’t mind people knowing I’m adopted. Sometimes I offer this information if a conversation reveals something relevant to me and I may feel the need to share my experience.

I long for connection to others in similar situations too. Some people I know don’t know I’m adopted as I chose to keep that to myself for one reason or another. I don’t like anyone being introduced as an adopted person.

My aunty introduced me to her friend once and went on to say about ‘the day we got you’ etc. I didn’t like that one bit. It triggered me massively, but she probably didn’t think anything of it, and I didn’t feel I could say anything to her. 

I don’t mind talking about my adoption. However, every year around my birthday, I feel out of place. My thoughts are all over the place and I become needy when I don’t like to be on my own too much either. I know why, but I can’t stop it. I’m 49 and still have issues so it seems. 

Do you have contact with your birth family?

My birth mother died in 2006. We both started looking for each other after my 18th birthday. We found each other quite quickly as we were both looking at the same time. We wrote some letters to each other and met face-to-face in a local pub when I was around 19.

It was surreal sitting opposite someone who I resembled, was blood-related to, but was a complete stranger. We met again maybe a year later, where I met her children. A very weird yet upsetting experience as it brought along feelings of rejection all over again. Why me? Why did you keep these two children, not me? 

I’m in contact with her son at the moment after contacting him on Facebook around 2020. I felt the urge to make things right. I have found lots more out about my birth mother and the life I would have been born into.

Speaking to him gave me closure on a lot of things, and also cleared some things up too. We’ve not met yet but both are keen to, so I hope it happens. 

For people thinking of adopting, do you have any advice based on your experience?

For people thinking of adopting, I’d say to gain as much knowledge of the emotional and psychological impact adoption has and will have as adopted children grow up. Be prepared to answer countless questions and to make sure you answer as honestly as possible in an age-appropriate way.

People’s opinions on adoption are all different, some positive, some negative. So I’d say preparation is key. Parenting has its challenges regardless of where children come from, so at times it’s trial and error that no book can prepare you for. Do what works for you and yours. 

What advice would you give young adoptees who are struggling with their feelings about adoption?

For young adoptees, I think back to my adolescent years when my thoughts were all over the place with my emotions. I wondered which were normal and which were because I was adopted.

I just needed to be listened to and understood. So, my advice is to speak up as best you can or even write your feelings/thoughts/questions down in a journal or in your phone notes. It helps to get it out of your head sometimes.

I personally found it helped finding similar people to talk to, so online and face-to-face groups were good for me.

It’s important to remember that every adoption is different, good and bad, so sharing experiences can help us through our lives and process our own experiences. Keep talking and asking questions until you feel you have the answers. Just know that some questions may be left unanswered and that’s ok. We learn to deal with that by accepting it. 

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